Fortunately for them, assembling all that data back in Mountain View was a far less rigorous task: Google engineers use their mapping software to link the photos to their shooting locations and string them together to create the panoramic paths users walk through.

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Well, that's one more option to Google's mapping service and one less company paying data dividends into the Mountain View system.

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The Mountain View-based group said it collects and compiles data about its users based on their activity on its various sites -- from its search page to Gmail to YouTube to phones running its Android operating system.

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